Industrial equipment manufacturers are introducing increasingly complex electronic control equipment which of course needs to be serviced. Unfortunately, industrial innovation often proceeds at such a rapid pace that maintenance personnel are hard put to keep up. A common approach has been for companies to provide a lengthy period of "on-the-job-training." Though experience is one of the more effective training methods, such long apprenticeships can often be shortened by using simulators to impart much of such knowledge in a shorter period of time in a classroom environment. For example, in the lift industry, complex electromechanical lift simulators have been developed by various lift manufacturers to train their maintenance personnel. Similar simulators have been developed by companies, for example, in the injection molding business, aircraft business, etc. The applications for such simulators are of course very wide. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,832,790, U.K. Patent No. 1 542 910, and U.K. Patent Applications GB No. 2 127 645 A and 2 143 361 A.
Many companies have found that such training, though useful in reducing the period of on-the-job-training, is necessarily limited in time, and may be more or less effective depending on the ability of the individual students to absorb large amounts of information in a such a short period of time.
In addition, such companies have found that many of their employees, though willing and eager to become expert in newly introduced and highly sophisticated electronic equipment, are unable to satisfy their needs even in the field over a long period, due to their lacking basic electrical troubleshooting skills.